When Friday rolled around, however, my mother walked into the basement with the stern intent of waking me up. Her heels clacked on the
concrete floors. She walked up to me, shook me by the shoulders, “Wake up. Get up. C’mon now.”

“I’m awake. Christ.”

“Watch your mouth,” she said, then quickly demanded, “You’re going Downtown with us tonight.”

“For what?”

"From somewhere back in the crowd a woman hinted at the impending apocalypse."

She folded her arms. “You know what. I wrote a note about it yesterday.”

I hadn’t received the note. I said, “I don’t remember.”

She sighed and started tearing the few wool blankets from my grasp. “The culture thing on the Mall. It starts at nine. I have your
shirt upstairs, ironed and ready. We’re leaving for dinner in twenty minutes.”

I was much too tired to get up from the couch or even fight with her for the soft, magnificent blankets. “You go now and I’ll
meet you there.”

She sighed again, “You’d better be there. The mayor has something important to talk about and your dad and I think that
it’s about our road.”

I sat up, now completely cold and without covering. “Why would he address the entire frickin’ city about Frederick
Street?”

“It’s an important street.”

“I guess.”

“That’s besides the point. You haven’t done anything with yourself all week. It’s time to embetter
yourself.”

Though she was right about my lethargy and I wanted to tell her that “embetter” was not a word, I simply agreed to go. It was out
of an uncomplicated, child-like dread; I knew better than to give my mother a reason to complain.

“Good. Call me when you get there.” She kissed my cheek and walked upstairs.

I covered my head with a small, decorative pillow that read “Love Makes the World Go Round,” and fell back asleep.

Mayor Fiedler stood behind a podium in the center of The Downtown Mall with his hands resting on the dark, stained wood. He was a small-town
politician in the truest sense of the phrase. He was balding, tall, pale, dressed in a sloppy, sepia-colored suit. His only fault, the people had said, was an awkward
posture and a tendency to be somewhat “politically dramatic.”

It was the first time I heard him speak, and his voice was higher-pitched, more feminine than expected: “One of the main reasons this
sort of event was hosted tonight was not only to allow you all to see how talented the people of Western Maryland are, how good our food is here, and how well we all get
along. It was also to make public the big plans for our area.”

He moved back to a large poster sheathed in burgundy tapestry. It was a big deal, apparently, whatever was behind that thing. I mean, he
hadn’t used the window treatments since he visited my high school to lecture on the perils of marijuana. (This was a set of Venetian blinds. He opened them to show a
cartoon of some red-eyed cat smoking reefer, holding a pistol to its temple.)

He waited a moment for all the chattering around the stage to stop, then smiled and unveiled an aerial black-and-white of the city with a
thick, blue line zig-zagging through it.

Some members of the crowd gasped. My mother and father looked on, disappointed that whatever the poster was about, it had nothing to do with
their hopes of road improvement. Frederick Street would go on with its deep, ugly potholes and my father would keep having to clean various carrion off the asphalt in
front of our house.

Fielder returned to the podium. “It is a new age, my fellow Cumberlanders. An age of technology, an age of Enlightenment, an age of new
things, an age of–”

A man from near the stage raised his hand.

“Yes? Marty?”

Marty scratched his head and adjusted his bright green tie. “Don’t mind me much, Mayor. I just want to know….” He
paused and became angry in his thoughts, “I mean, what the hell is going on here?”

“I’ll tell you what’s going on here, Marty. What’s going on here is a massive fiber optic cable running through our
fair city.” Fiedler smiled to a few claps and pointed to the blue line. “This stripe here is what is going to bring back our jobs. Give us the ability to use
faster, better technology. Basically improve our lives in ways we can’t yet imagine.”

A few people clapped, said, “Amen.”

Another man beside Marty yelled, “That’s bullshit. I’m not spending money on no goddamned new TV.” From somewhere
back in the crowd a woman hinted at the impending apocalypse.

My father smiled and elbowed me. He knew I was an atheist and it was his fatherly way of joking with me about it.

I scoffed and lit a cigarette.

He was then struck with an idea. “Aren’t we going to have to dig a trench under the highway for that thing?” Then,
“Won’t that cost the city a helluva lot of money?”

Fielder went on to describe the benefits of the new, massive line, ignoring my father’s questions. Something about faster internet
speeds. My father scowled and repeated himself, more loudly the next time. Fiedler continued; I could see by a little, protruding vein in my father’s forehead that
displayed his rage that things were going to get intense.

“I’m going to get out of here,” I whispered to my mother, “before things get out of hand.”

“Okay,” she whispered back, “but we’ll be home late. Your father and I are going to stop off and get a few
drinks.” She gave me a tight hug and smiled.

My parents drinking was a rare occurrence. They felt a little more relatable just then. I decided that I’d pick up a six-pack and drink
it in an alley somewhere before heading home to my little brother and his noisy friends. Maybe I’ll actually be able to sleep, I thought.

I left our spot near the Dollar Sweep and started walking back to my car, over the cracked brick. It was night, finally, and the lampposts
were dousing the alleys around the little shops with a yellowish tint. Some Christmas lights hung from the trees that had been planted in a row at the center of the
broader streets. At a corner, I stopped to see a small, manmade waterfall. It was a collection of tan slate and mortar, probably fifteen feet high, with a very shallow
pond at the base and a large black pump pulling water to the top. A few spotlights shone from various angles and trickles of water splashed lightly from the faces of
jutting rocks. A Do Not Drink the Water sign was placed on a site behind the waterfall that apparently didn’t see much action.

“Bullshit,” I said, bent over, cupped my hands and took a drink. The water had no flavor, not even the taste of water. Just an
overwhelming coldness.

I passed Coney Island Hot Dogs and the Downtown Bookstore and realized that there wasn’t a person in sight. Nobody. Nobody in the
Mary’s Hallmark. Nobody in Au Revior. Nobody in the coffee shops or the bars. Everyone was still at the speech and I was left with only the dark shops and the faint
smell of chlorine on my hands.

Continue to Part 4 »

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